28 Aralık 2015 Pazartesi

Attention Window and the Situation Awareness



ATTENTION WINDOW AND THE SITUATION AWARENESS


Looking is turning our fase and eyes to a certain direction and percieve the objects there as a whole.  For example, percieving that the sides of a rectangle connect and the sides are parallel.


In contrast, seeing is identifying this object as ‘door’.  Looking is a simple operation without mental depth, a process in which lower level seeing information is stored temporarily at the buffer regions.


In seeing the object that is seen gets binded or related with the ‘door object’ in the semantical memory.


Focusing is the limitation of the area that we see under mental control and inhibition of the area outside.


Concentrating is the increasing of the binding operation during seeing.


For example, the evaluation of the door size, whether it is old or new, a comparison with the other doors etc.


Paying attention includes both focusing and some concentration. We first focuse and limit the area af attention and then concentrate, increase the binding depth somewhat.


The focused thing does not have to be a percievable object.  One can focus on an abstract subject.  The increasing attention transforms into concentration.


Attention window is the area, details of which contents are binded with their meanings.  We see the objects that are in the frame at which we focus our attention.


The attention window may be visually three dimensional as in driving.  Attention window is not visual only.  The area which has a high relational depth forms the attention window when focusing on an abstract subject.


While solving a problem, attention concentrates on different aspects of the problem and subjects related to these.  The relation’s depth and amount determines the size of the attention window.


In tasks such as Air Traffic Control, the controller who may be faced by serious problems, will have to redirect his/her attention window, shed light upon other subjects, direct his/her attention just after solving the problem.


Experiments have proved that, even some of the things that reside in the same screen may not be noticed, when the attention window gets too small.


Situation Awareness requires awareness of the size of the current attention window.